<p>I was wondering how many mathematical or quantitative classes a student should take during college to appear mathematically competent to employers? I'm good enough at math that I can get through it but prefer other subjects, but I'm still looking to take enough numerically based courses (e.g. accounting, finance, economics, etc) to show that I'm capable of doing math. I know some people would say "the more the better," but for someone who doesn't have a particular interest in the subject matter, what is a sufficient number of courses or credits to show numerical ability?</p>
<p>They’re not gonna look at your transcript class by class and say, “Oh wow, this kid took x amount of quantitative classes, he must be compentent in math.”</p>
<p>If you want the employability of a math degree, get a math degree. Being a psych major and taking a few quantitative classes means nothing.</p>
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<p>I disagree. Many math courses (actually the bulk of the courses that fall within the algebra, geometry and combinatorics realms) are utterly useless for someone working in economics or finance.</p>
<p>If you get As in real analysis, probability theory, partial differential equations, linear algebra and maybe stochastic calculus, absolutely no one is going to doubt your quantitative ability. This should also give you enough of a background to pursue any type of relevant grad program, should you decide to go down that path in the future.</p>
<p>I’m going to give a different perspective on this.</p>
<p>First of all, the amount of quantitative competence you need varies greatly by industry; I can speak to my experience applying to consulting companies, but I can’t speak for anything else. When I applied to companies that requested degrees focused more in math or computer science, I realized that my single math course (and C- in it, to boot) would not give the impression that I’m very good at quantitative analysis. However, I had taken several political science courses that required extensive quantitative reasoning, and I was doing polisci research that also required some basic knowledge of statistics.</p>
<p>I also realized that nobody really cared if I understood every principle of mathematics, but everybody cared about whether I could use and learn analytical tools. For that, I knew that I would need to highlight my Excel knowledge… so I did!</p>
<p>To every interview I had, I brought a copy of a major paper I wrote, using quantitative data analysis to explain why Congress votes a certain way on certain bills. It actually came up several times, and when people took a glance at it, they immediately knew that I could properly analyze data sets AND explain them in a simple, concise fashion. I was told that this did far more to help my cause than some random courses ever could.</p>
<p>Basically, don’t worry about having a certain number of courses… worry about developing the ability to analyze data because that’s what is important at the end of the day.</p>